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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23839570">The Road Home Prequel</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1'>laniew1</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Without a Trace</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2004-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2004-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:02:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,879</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23839570</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin had his first vision when he was seven</p><p>This is a Martin-based prequel to my WaT AU Challenge Fic The Road Home.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Fitzgerald/Danny Taylor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Road Home Prequel</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Prequel to The Road Home</b>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Martin had his first vision when he was seven.</p><p>Up to that point he’d been a normal, semi-happy child. He laughed and he cried and he played with his friends in his backyard and tried to ignore the fact that his father studied everything little thing that he wrote and spoke.</p><p>As if he was waiting for something.</p><p>His father wasn’t with him the day that the something he’d been waiting for happened.</p><p>It was a Saturday and his father, as per normal, was working.</p><p>His mother was bored, tired of staying at home with two children and nothing to do, she had decided to take his sister and him to visit her parents. He adored his grandparents, his mothers at least were friendly and affectionate, his fathers aloof and distant.</p><p>It had been a good day, he’d eaten the home made peanut butter cookies that his grandmother pushed at him and he giggled as his grandfather ruffled his hair and told him that he was growing up to fast.</p><p>It was mid-evening when it happened, he’d played in the backyard with his sister for hours before his mother had called them in for dinner and now he laid on the couch beside his grandfather, half paying attention to the game that his grandfather was watching, mostly napping.</p><p>His grandmother dropping a glass in the kitchen startled him and he jumped, his grandfathers hand coming out to gently settle on his bare arm. The touch was meant to soothe and all Martin would remember later was gasping for air, his body convulsing.</p><p>He panicked when he couldn’t see anything, his vision hazy and dark, tinged with red and he wouldn’t learn until much later that visions tinged with red were a bad sign.</p><p>
  <i>His grandfather working in his garage, puttering as his grandmother called it.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The wrench he was cleaning dropping suddenly from his fingers, hand wrapping around his arm as he cried out suddenly, falling.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>His grandmother running in. Crying, falling to her knees and pulling him into her arms.</i>
</p><p>Martin at seven hadn’t understood, when his vision had cleared his grandfather was looking at him with a concerned expression, his mother just looked scared.</p><p>His father had just looked angry… and sort of resigned when his mother told him that night. Martin had hovered at the top of the stairs, hiding just out of sight as his parents had fought about him.</p><p>He hadn’t understood until two weeks later, when his grandfather died in his garage while he was cleaning his tools, that he was different.</p><p>And that as far as his father was concerned, being different meant that he had to hide.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>******************************************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>Legislation was passed when Martin was eleven, PSI-Corp was formed and all children from the ages of 8-17 were tested for psychic abilities.</p><p>Every year they were tested and every year Victor would descend on the day of testing and pull Martin out of school. Excuses of family illnesses, deaths, impromptu trips to the zoo, to where Victor worked falling with ease from his lips.</p><p>If Martin had been attending a public school it might not have looked so odd, as it was he attended a private school, a boarding school at that and Martin would wonder later if his father realized how suspicious it had all appeared to the faculty and the testers from PSI-Corp.</p><p>It had seemed to him that if his father really wanted to hide what Martin was capable of he would have taken Martin out of school entirely, not for just the day that testing was conducted.</p><p>PSI-Corp started testing on an unannounced cycle when Martin was fourteen. Martin had not had any other visions since the one of his grandfather when he was seven, he didn’t count the one that he’d had about the gardener stealing his mothers jewelry because Martin had always thought he looked shifty and when it had happened his father had just sighed had said it was bound to happen sooner or later.</p><p>It was a Wednesday and the students in his year, all 45 of them were lined up in alphabetical order first thing in the morning outside the small office area used by the school nurse.</p><p>Martin had just shrugged, he’d come prepared and brought a book and the school nurse tested their vision and hearing once a year about this time after all so he thought nothing amiss.</p><p>It was when it was his turn to go into the room that he realized that this wasn’t a physical. Sitting at a small table, a tablet and what looked like his school file in front of him was an ordinary looking man.</p><p>But Martin knew he wasn’t ordinary, he could feel it in his bones. The pulse of energy that moved from the man to him and back again.</p><p>The man smiled gently.</p><p>“Good morning Martin,” he stood gracefully and waved Martin to a chair on the other side of the table. Martin clutched his book to his chest and hoped he didn’t look terrified as he sat down. His father was going to be so angry.</p><p>“My name is Ken Davies,” a gentle smile as Martin shifted uneasily in his chair. “I work for a company named PSI-Corp… you may have heard of them?”</p><p>Martin nodded, trying to not look miserable; he had a feeling he was failing.</p><p>Ken bit his lip, and studied him, Martin shifted again and tried to breathe normally. Ken shook his head and glanced at Martin’s open file before him.</p><p>“I’ve noticed from your file that you’ve never been tested before.” It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact and Martin jerked his head in response. He’d never wanted to be someone else so much in his entire life.</p><p>“It’s okay Martin,” Ken smiled reassuringly though it did nothing to settle Martin’s stomach or quell his uneasiness. “You’re not in any trouble.”</p><p>Martin managed a breath at that, a quick gasp and another after. He summoned a weak smile from somewhere and tried not to think about how angry his father was going to be.</p><p>“I’m just going to ask you a few questions,” a tap on the file in front of him, an unspoken ‘I already know everything that you are and what you’re going to say’ hanging in the air around them.</p><p>“My father…” he mumbled in a quiet hiss of air.</p><p>“You’re not going to be in any trouble Martin,” another reassuring smile and Martin just barely managed to contain the snort, staring at the table top in front of him as if it was the most interesting thing that he’d ever seen.</p><p>Obviously this man had never met his father.</p><p>“All you have to do is answer truthfully,” stated very softly and Martin looked up to meet eyes that appeared sympathetic to his plight.</p><p>Maybe he <i>did</i> know his father after all.</p><p>Martin took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders and prepared to change his life.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>******************************************************************************</p>
</div><p>On his seventeenth birthday Martin received his <i>official</i> acceptance letter to the PSI-Corp academy. He’d been <i>unofficially</i> accepted that day three years prior when he’d told Ken Davies everything that his father had told him to keep quiet about.</p><p>As expected his father hadn’t been pleased. The slight amount of time that Martin spent at home was now fraught with tension and while he hadn’t been close to the man in years there was an even larger distance of Martins’ making between them now.</p><p>Two days after his seventeenth birthday he quietly sat his parents down (his sister he’d told the day before and she’d fled the premises to stay with a friend) and told him that he’d been accepted. His father (as his sister had predicted) was infuriated, his mother had that look that said this was nothing less than she’d expected.</p><p>Not being able to talk to his father was nothing new, the man didn’t want to hear anything that he had to say, didn’t want to hear his explanations. His father had in fact stormed out and it was sad that his anger was the first emotion that Martin had seen him have in years.</p><p>The pills that he took every morning dampened more than just his psychic abilities it seemed.</p><p>Martin left the next morning. He had only the clothes on his back, the credit card that his parents had given him on his sixteenth birthday with strict instructions that it was only to be used in emergencies and the six hundred dollars that was his accumulation of six years worth of birthdays and Christmases.</p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>******************************************************************************</p>
</div><p> </p><p>It was his eyes that drew him first. Although the way he moved and smiled came in close seconds and thirds, Martin decided.</p><p>The only thing that detracted from Danny’s irresistibility was the fact that he flirted with everything that walked on two legs and breathed. Men, women, boys, girls. It didn’t really seem to matter.</p><p>It was kind of annoying.</p><p>The second night he hadn’t even been planning on going back. He’d gotten what he wanted the first night after all. Sex, plain and simple, with no strings attached.</p><p>He’d just been staring at that letter from PSI-Corp, his acceptance letter that he’d argued with his father about and found himself dressing quickly, his feet taking them seemingly without his knowledge to where he knew Danny was.</p><p>Something about the other boy pulled him. Yanked at his very soul and called to him.</p><p>Martin didn’t look too deeply at that, he just concentrated on blocking out every thought that Danny was transmitting and smiled at him.</p><p>It was his last night, morning and Danny was sleeping in his bed. He wrapped his hands around the medallion around his neck. It was cool in his hand and grounded him when nothing else seemed to lately, he wondered if that was what they were intended for.</p><p>He sensed movement and glanced almost reflexively over at the bed where Danny was still laying. He was still, his breathing even and dropping the barriers that he’d put into place to block him out revealed nothing.</p><p>Another glance in the mirror showed his face looking sad, miserable, resigned.</p><p>His father would laugh at him if he could seem him now. And then he’d give him a lecture on appearances and then Martin would come out of the closet.</p><p>So to speak anyway.</p><p>He surveyed the room and patted his pockets making sure he had everything. He stumbled into a chair when he tried to make his way to the bed.</p><p>Obstacles in his way, this was obviously a sign of some sort.</p><p>He sat without jostling the bed or shifting Danny to much. The last thing he needed was him waking, there’d be a scene Martin was sure and he wasn’t prepared for that.</p><p>He couldn’t keep himself from touching him though, it was the last time and Martin buried the sadness at that thought deep.</p><p>Fingers stroked through his hair. A soft kiss. Finger drawn down the side of his face as Martin committed his face to memory. He closed his eyes for a whisper of a second and made a promise that this wouldn’t be the end.</p><p>Then he stood and walked away.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>******************************************************************************</p>
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